


Birds that Sought the Sun

by AKA_47



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Marauders' Era, One Shot, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-08
Updated: 2018-09-08
Packaged: 2019-07-08 15:08:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15932942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AKA_47/pseuds/AKA_47
Summary: Remus and Clara are young and in love. They have the best intentions, but neither is free from baggage. Their love story plays out in a series of vignettes as the threat of Voldemort looms.





	Birds that Sought the Sun

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a long year since I've written any fanfic, and even longer since I've written about Harry Potter. I hope that you enjoy Clara, and of course, Remus and Clara together. Leave a review to let me know what you think!

**I.**

 

Growing up in a muggle household, Clara had been aware of all the usual terrors—the ghosts that might appear at any moment to snatch her away to the strange land between life and death, evil stepmothers intent on making her life miserable, goblins lurking in her closet. No more fanciful than most children, she had soon dismissed those fears in favor of the real horrors relayed to her nightly from the small, static-y television set.

 

Never, in those brief, hazy days of almost pleasurable terror had Clara given a thought to werewolves. Then again, she hadn’t spared much time for the notion of witches either, until a self-proclaimed witch sat across from her stunned parents and told them that their daughter belonged to a world just beyond their reach. Not that her father thought that the muggle world, just emerging into the 70s, bore much resemblance to the England he held in his memory, not that he understood or cared to listen to his much too opinionated daughter, even when operating on the belief that she was “normal”.

  

Clara had the impression that on that day in September 1971, as the scarlet steam engine rolled into King’s Cross, that her parents were glad to see her go. Her mother, tall, willowy, with the razor features more fitting to a woman of consequence than a young housewife, had always seen her daughter as a burden, no matter how quiet and small Clara had tried to make herself. All the same, the little girl kissed her parents’ cheeks and waved goodbye from the open windows of the train, a hollow mimicry of the real affection shown by the other children. She watched at the other mothers on the platform stretched out their hands for last touches, knowing that they would be starved of them for months. She watched the fathers call out last minute reminders, kiss their fingers before holding them to the retreating glass. For just a moment Clara allowed herself to imagine that she’d received such a farewell, and then she turned and found an empty compartment before the station had even fully receded from view.

 

She could never have said what would have happened had she turned away from that hidden part of herself and remained in the muggle world. She didn’t know whether things with her parents would have improved, if they could have grown to love some part of her at least. At any rate, her journey to Hogwarts seemed to draw a deep line between them. Their addresses, tepid enough in person when she’d lived with them, grew downright cold, though she caressed each mention of her name as though it were a term of endearment, each letter stowed safely in her trunk. If she’d told them that she’d fallen in love with a werewolf by the end of her fourth year, would they have given her up as insane (assuming that they hadn’t already)?

  

By the start of sixth year, she had abandoned hope of expecting any contact from her parents at all, her summer with them having been so strained that they seemed strange hosts rather than the couple responsible for her existence in the world. She’d made the trek to King’s Cross on her own, had only felt like she was home when she’d found herself in the compartment with Remus and his friends, rolling her eyes along with Lily as James talked exaggeratively about how he had suffered over the summer without the redhead’s attentions. Remus’ arm was slung casually over her shoulder, and for a moment Clara fought the urge to cry. Instead, she ducked her head to Remus’ shoulder.

 

“I can’t go back there,” she whispered against his collar.

 

“Alright then.” He brushed a hand through Clara’s dark hair. Only then did she let tears slip from her eyes. If any of the others noticed, they were tactful enough (or at least, Lily was, and the boys too afraid of her) not to mention it. Remus didn’t either, not through the welcome feast, not while they sat in the common room listening to Sirius tell tales of the summer quidditch matches he had had at the Potter’s. It was only when they were in the room of requirement, perched on a bed that had materialized for them when they’d pleaded in the hall for a place to be alone, that he brought it up, quietly, as though afraid to disturb the peaceful stillness.

 

“What happened, Clara?”

 

She groaned, flopping onto the mattress and burying her face in her hands. “Nothing,” she said through her fingers. “I know I have nothing to complain about compared to…” she lifted one palm from her face and waved it in the air to encompass the more pressing problems of the world.

 

“Compared to the fact that once a month I turn into a monster?” he guessed.

 

Clara smirked in spite of herself. “There’s that.”

 

Remus captured her wayward hand in his own and brought it to his lips.

 

“They don’t want me there,” she continued. “They’re afraid of me. They certainly don’t love me.”

 

Remus didn’t try to reassure her of parental affection as he might once have done (after all, Hope and Lyall had loved their son despite all odds). He’d witnessed the vitriol Sirius was met with at home, and whatever naïve notion he had about parental obligations had died.

 

“My mother’s pregnant again.”

 

Remus started. From all that Clara had said about her mother, she seemed to him the type to have been forced into motherhood, more suited to glamour than the life of a stay-at-home mom, and he couldn’t imagine her starting over at her age.

 

“They don’t want me,” Clara repeated. “I’m the one they broke. They don’t want me to taint the baby.”

 

“They said that?” Remus asked, incredulous.

 

“Not in so many words, but I think it would be easier if I didn’t go back. They’ll never have to explain me to the baby. They cleared out my room anyway. There are no pictures. It’ll be easy to pretend I never existed.” Her eyes stung, but she told herself over and over that she was grown now, she didn’t need them. She had her friends. She had Remus.

 

The boy in question was running a fingertip over the freckles dotted across her nose. “I couldn’t forget you if you obliviated me.”

 

She scrunched her nose, momentarily halting his progress as her freckles were obscured. “Yes you would. I’m very good at memory charms.”

 

But then he was kissing her, and it was Clara who forgot everything except the feel of his lips. “You’ll live with me,” he promised in a pause for breath. She didn’t answer with words. She didn’t need to.

 

**II.**

 

“You could go to America,” Remus suggested.

 

The Order had just left their flat, and in the absence of the press of bodies Clara felt the familiar dread creeping back in. She looked up from the sink, where she’d been washing the mismatched glasses and mugs she’d offered their guests. She’d given her best glass to Dumbledore, and it was this one that she clutched in her hands now like a talisman.

 

“ _I_ could go to America? Are you safer here than I am?”

 

Anti-muggle born sentiment was rising, she didn’t need the Daily Prophet’s reporting to tell her that, though she read it every morning, searching for names she recognized, and for the relief that washed over her when she found none. But if the term mudblood was making a comeback, then certainly werewolves, who had never curried much favor in the wizarding world, were in even greater danger now that anything less than pureblood was unacceptable.

 

“No,” he said, “but the Order…”

 

The glass in her hand erupted into a million shards. Vaguely, Clara noticed the blood turning the sharp triangles to ruby. “Am I not in the Order?”

 

Remus had started toward her at the sound of the glass breaking, but now he stood frozen in mid step, halted by the ice in her tone. “Of course you are,” he said quietly. “I only meant that all my friends are in it. I can’t leave them, they’re my family.”

 

Clara gripped the edge of the counter with her stinging hands, still not moving from her ridiculous pantomime of house work. “How long have we been together now, Remus? Four years? Sirius, James, Peter, Lily, they’re my family too. They’re all I have. You’re all I have.”

 

Her parents had been all too happy to accept their separation. She hadn’t heard from them since her brother was born, the brother who was being raised in the belief that he was an only child, a miracle baby born to parents who had waited for years. She’d cried when the letter had arrived. Remus had held her. Had he forgotten already?

 

Remus did move now, wrapping his arms around her waist and ducking his head to whisper against her neck. “I don’t want you to go to America. I love you. I’m afraid, Clara. I can’t lose you.”

 

She felt his tears on her skin and they seemed to melt her body into something softer. “Whatever happens, we face it together, as a family.”

 

She felt Remus nod. “Now let me heal you,” he said. And she did.

 

**III.**

 

For a small party, there sure were a lot of empty liquor bottles cluttering Lily and James’ counters. Firewhiskey, scotch, vodka, gin, and a number of other bottles Clara suspected were Marauders’ special concoctions, stood abandoned as the men who had imbibed most of them all gathered around James, shouting drunken congratulations and offering lewd suggestions as to what James could do with his new wife on their wedding night. Even Remus, who as a rule didn’t drink more than a glass of anything stronger than Butterbeer, joined in the teasing.

  

For her part, Clara nursed the same gin and tonic she’d had in her hands for the past hour, fighting the strange melancholy that had stolen over her.

 

“I’m trying very hard not to listen to any of that, but they’re making it incredibly difficult.”

 

Clara shook herself to find Lily standing in front of her, happily flushed, radiant. She wore a simple eyelet lace dress that fell just above her knee, her red hair a tangle of carelessly lovely waves around her face. The new wedding band on her finger looked for all the world like it had always rested there. For a moment, Lily surveyed her friend’s expression, then she raised her champagne flute and clinked it against Clara’s glass.

 

“Cheers.”

 

Clara took an obligatory sip that turned midway into more of an involuntary gulp. As she coughed, Lily leaned against the wall, calm, beautiful, confident. Her muggle parents had loved her, been proud of their daughter. Of course James had married her. He would have been a fool not to.

 

“If you don’t tell him it bothers you, you might be waiting forever,” Lily said.

 

“I’ve decided not to care.”

 

Lily choked on a laugh, looking askance at Clara. “Seems to be going well.”

 

Clara threw a half-hearted elbow at Lily’s ribs. “I’m serious, if he doesn’t want to get married then it’s fine. It’s a broken institution anyway.”

 

This time Lily didn’t bother to suppress a laugh. “Thanks.”

 

Clara blushed. “Except with you guys of course.”

 

Lily’s eyes had shifted back to her husband. “It’s a terrible time to get married.” Despite her words, a tiny smile lifted the corners of Lily’s mouth as James’ eyes found hers. “I know we might die, that the Order may be doomed and Voldemort may win this, but that’s also the reason we had to do it. Even in this crazy world,” she looked down at her wedding band, spinning it deliberately around her finger, “we have this commitment to each other, something constant.”

 

Clara didn’t have a ring to look down at, Remus wasn’t watching to catch her eye. She felt unmoored, like she might float away at any moment.

 

“All I’m saying” Lily continued, pushing herself off of the wall, “is that if you want to get married it’s not something you can just ignore. You should tell him.”

 

Clara nodded, catching her friend’s hand as she walked away and holding it briefly in her own. Lily smiled before spinning around to face the boys. “We are not doing that!” she yelled, catching the thread of their insinuations, quickly enveloped in their circle.

 

Clara put her drink down on the windowsill and slipped out. Once beyond the protections of the house, she revolved don the spot and disappeared from Godric’s Hollow, bound for her empty flat.

 

**IV.**

 

“I won’t doom you to the life of a monster’s wife!”

 

“Stop calling yourself that!”

 

“It’s true and I won’t do that to you. As long as you choose to have me I am yours, but I will not have you bound to me.”

 

“I’m already bound to you, Remus. I’m not going anywhere, with or without the title.”

 

And because that was true, she didn’t ask about marriage again.

 

**V.**

 

Clara shrugged out of her cloak, wrapping it around the little dark haired baby, shielding him against the chilly October night. She shushed him, though he didn’t cry, hadn’t been crying when she’d stepped over the body of her best friend to lift him into her arms.

When was the last time she’d held him? Months ago, before Lily and James’ seclusion had grown severe, the threat to their lives too great to risk frequent visitors.

 

She stepped into her flat. Remus was in front of her instantly, face more like the animal he sometimes became than she’d ever seen it. In a flash, his wand was pointed at her.

 

“Where did I first tell you about my curse?” he spat.

 

Clara tightened her grip on the bundle in her arms, pressing him so tightly to her chest that he squirmed. “Remus, I have Harry.”

 

For a split-second Remus let his grip slacken, looking down at the tiny head that peeked out from her cloak.

 

“He’s okay.”

 

Her words seemed to break whatever spell the child had cast over him. “Sirius betrayed them.” His voice shook with rage, with unshed tears. “He led Voldemort straight to them. He killed Peter.”

 

The world slipped away. Clara had stepped over their bodies. It was unthinkable. She shouldn’t have been able to do it. She’d gone to their wedding in that house, had foolishly talked over her own problems like they mattered. It hadn’t been that long ago, but she’d stepped over their bodies. It was insane. She’d thought of Harry and she’d done it.

 

The idea that Sirius—carefree, crass, loyal Sirius, could have sold them out to Voldemort, that all the Marauders save her Moony had been taken in one fell swoop? It knocked the wind from her. Clara felt her knees give way. Harry’s weight escaped her grasp. She dimly recognized that Remus had taken him, placed him on the sofa, and she was glad. She wasn’t sure that she could hold him anymore. There had been something comforting in his solidity all the same.

 

“It was two in the morning,” she said quietly, robotically, and to no one in particular since Remus wasn’t asking anymore, “the common room, right before we kissed for the first time.”

 

Remus crouched in front of her, tears making ragged tracks down his cheeks. “They’re all gone,” he said.

 

“Not me.” She wasn’t allowed to grieve in the way that she wanted, not when he needed her. Just as, all those years ago, there was no room for her fear over his curse. His burden had always seemed so much heavier than hers. “Not Harry.”

 

Remus glanced over at the little boy, to Lily’s eyes as they stared back at him.

 

“I couldn’t leave him.”

 

“Of course not.”

 

“I want to keep him, Remus.” She hadn’t really known it until she’d said it aloud. When she’d brought him home she’d assumed that it was to wait it out for Sirius. His god father should have taken him, after all. But now. She’d felt his heartbeat against her own and she’d known that she loved him.

 

“I want this, Remus.” She said more firmly, crawling across the floor, still not quite trusting her legs to carry her. She did trust herself to cradle Harry to her once she reached him, brushing his fine hair away from his face to reveal the jagged scar she’d only glimpsed at Godric’s Hollow. Behind her, she heard Remus’ sharp intake of breath at the sight of it, but she ran a feather-light fingertip over the lightning bolt. He was beautiful regardless, maybe more so because of it.

 

“I’m sure there are quite a few people who will be lining up to take him,” Remus said uncertainly.

 

Clara didn’t look up from the baby. “I will not have him growing up thinking that his parents’ best friends didn’t love him enough to raise him. We’re doing this, Remus.”

 

His chin dropped to her shoulder, watching her watch Harry.

 

“Of course we are.”

**VI.**

 

Clara was a good mother. Despite the fact that she had no real role model, despite the fact that it was thrust upon her, she loved how it felt to love Harry, and know with each smile and giggle that he loved her too. It was so easy that Clara wondered how he mother could have been so bad at it, how as a little girl, Clara could have been so difficult to love. Clara loved Remus more now too as he took care of the little boy he should only ever have been a pseudo uncle to. Her heart swelled each time she was them, and she began to believe that they had weathered the storm, alive, whole, better than they had been before Voldemort had ever darkened their lives.

           

 

If she felt guilty sometimes that their happiness was predicated on the deaths of their loved ones, she tried to bury it in affection for Harry. She looked at the baby and the man she had loved since he was a boy, and she felt for the first time that she truly understood the meaning of the word, “family.”

 

**VII.**

 

Harry was screaming. She knew it was because she was sobbing, that her ragged breaths were rocking his little body unpleasantly. She had learned in the month that she’d had him that Harry couldn’t stand it if anyone cried. But she couldn’t stop. Dumbledore was impassive in front of her, Dumbledore who preached love above all else, at her doorstep demanding that she give half of her family up to strangers.

 

“Albus, please—“

 

If it came to a duel, she wouldn’t win. He was the most powerful wizard in Britain.

 

“Harry cannot grow up a celebrity. He will not grow to have the strength of character that he will need.”

 

If she had the power to roll her eyes, if they weren’t sore with tears, she would have. “Remus and I can teach him humility. I’m a muggle born and you know what Remus is. We can teach him what it means to fight for what you want. Please, Albus, we love him.”

 

Dumbledore looked a little startled. Had he really thought that all of this was simply out of loyalty to Lily and James? Just as quickly as the surprise had flitted across his features, it disappeared, so that Clara could almost believe that she had imagined it.

 

“They are the only family he has left,” he said, with such finality that Clara knew she’d lost. Still, she clutched Harry to her.

 

“Remus,” she begged. Beside her, Remus looked pale and drawn, maybe even horrified, but resigned. He’d given up as soon as Dumbledore had explained what he’d come for, she’d felt it.

 

“Harry should have the opportunity to love without the burden of his past.”

 

Remus didn’t say, “without the burden of me as a father,” but she heard in in the silence that followed as Dumbledore eased the baby from her arms, disappearing almost in that same moment. She hadn’t even gotten the chance to say goodbye.

 

“I’ll never forgive you for this,” she whispered to Remus in Dumbledore’s wake.  

 

He didn’t try to explain. There was nothing he could say.

 

**VIII.**

 

Fate had always been a strange mistress to Clara. She’d lost one family only to gain another at Hogwarts. Then that family had been snatched away by Voldemort, and she had tried to forge another with the little boy who was left behind. When fate dealt another blow and stole him away too, she thought that she was done trying, that she was not destined for the happiness she’d watched other people attain.

 

But she was pregnant with a child that was wholly her own, that no one could take away from her. She and Remus were barely speaking. She was furious. Still, it would be alright, because fate had _finally_ swung their way.

**IX.**

 

He looked sick, terrified, angry.

 

“I _can’t,_ ” he said, burying his head in his hands. “Don’t you understand? I can’t be a father.”

 

Or a husband. Or the man she needed him to be. _Merlin,_ did she love this man, but for the first time in her life, Clara was certain that she needed something more.

 

**X.**

 

_You loved her, but after 7 thyear, you both decided it was best to go your separate ways. You were sad for a while, but you grew to like being alone, it was safer that way._

 

Clara repeated the mantra in her head as she held her wand over Remus’ sleeping form. Her arm tensed as the spell flowed from her wand to Remus’ mind, erasing every trace of their adult years together.

 

The tears fell thick and fast, but her concentration didn’t waver. Clara was very good at memory charms.

 

**XI.**

 

Remus recognized the surname of the little girl in his Defense Against the Dark Arts class. He recognized, too, the shade of her dark hair, the curve of her cheek. He couldn’t help but smile whenever he looked at her, a sign that this long-ago love had found some happiness.

 

He dismissed the similarities to his own features, the shape of her eyes, her smile (more frequent than his own) that lit up her whole face. He hadn’t seen Clara since they were teenagers. Was it wishful thinking to see himself reflected in Clara’s daughter? For try as he might Remus couldn’t think of why he would have ended things with her.

 

Still, looking at her daughter, her perfect, lovely, little girl, he couldn’t help but be grateful that he had. How could he be anything but glad that she had gotten to be a mother to such a child?

 

Fate worked in such mysterious ways…

 

 

 

 


End file.
